UCLA CORNERBACK DEALS WITH LIFE AFTER KATRINA.

Byline: RAMONA SHELBURNE  Staff Writer

For high school football players in New Orleans, there was no bigger stage than playing in Tad Gormley Stadium. There were 26,500 seats, a pristine grass field, three locker rooms and a press box big enough for 110 people.

Getting to play at Tad Gormley was a privilege, and Edna Karr Magnet High had earned that right. Like always, it was one of the best teams in the state, filled with college prospects like future UCLA defensive back Jeremy McGee.

Edna Karr was supposed to kick off its season Aug. 28, 2005, with a scrimmage in Tad Gormley. McGee had waited all his life to play there.

He never made it out of the locker room.

A few hours before kickoff, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the Crescent City in advance of what later became the costliest and deadliest natural disaster in national history, Hurricane Katrina.

``We had our uniforms on and everything,'' McGee recalled Monday afternoon, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Katrina's landfall. ``We all just thought we'd come back and play Monday, so we folded up our uniforms and put them back in our lockers.''

McGee went with friends to Houston, hoping to make a road trip out of it. But within hours, he knew this was no time for teenage fun.

``I was watching the news and all of a sudden, they showed (Tad Gormley Stadium), totally under water,'' he recalled.

His attention immediately turned to his sister, Latashia Smith, who had stayed behind in a hotel on Canal Street with her three children.

Cell phone reception was out, the hotel phones were down.

``I was all the way in Houston and she was in New Orleans and there was nothing I could do to help her,'' McGee said.

A few days later, he finally got through. His sister had been stranded for three days, but was rescued just as the hotel was running out of food. He immediately hopped on a Greyhound bus to Baton Rouge, La., where the rest of his family had settled in with his brother, in a dorm room at Southern University.

In all, McGee said about 20 people crowded into the dorm room. The family home in New Orleans had been destroyed by wind damage and still hasn't been rebuilt. McGee was left with little choice but to enroll at a high school in Baton Rouge for his senior year.

The rest of that star-studded team from Edna Karr scattered across the country. A year later, the pain of losing so much is still with McGee, even as he builds a new life at UCLA.

``We talk about it sometimes,'' said his roommate and fellow Louisianan, UCLA starting tailback, Chris Markey. ``It's still touchy for me because I couldn't talk to my family for like a week. It was tough.

``I know Jeremy is happy he got the opportunity to come here, because a lot of guys I knew back home, their senior year was ruined.''

Football has become an outlet for McGee. He has focused on learning a new position (cornerback) after switching from tailback during fall camp. He's focused on becoming a kick returner and punt returner, where he has impressed the coaching staff enough to be No. 2 on the depth chart. He can't wait to get on the field for UCLA's first game Saturday against Utah at the Rose Bowl.

``I always think about it,'' McGee said. ``It's tough. My parents can't live in their house anymore. We may never be able to go back home. ... But football takes my mind of it a little. I wasn't really even thinking about how (today) is the one-year anniversary of it. I knew it was coming up, but I guess I got caught up in everything here with football.''

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